The ongoing saga of being a ongoing father of two - one with autism and one who died for 20 minutes.
From pre-birth, birth and through those difficult toddler years.
It's definitely a life changing event going from singleton to parent.

Wednesday, 6 July 2011

We had our first meeting tonight at Dragonflies. A sort of pre-induction meeting to get us ready for the new school in mid-September.

It was quite informative, which is always good at these types of things. They went through various aspects of what the children will be doing, what they can offer (things we already knew like musical therapy, occupation therapy and the like) and other sundry things like transport.

The funniest thing is that Emily will have to wear a school uniform come September. It's not that much of a uniform tracky bottoms and a sweatshirt, but it gets her used to wearing one so when she graduates to big school, the clothing will be one less thing she'll have to get used to.

That brought up a question for Sue and I. As Emily is the muckiest mucky muck you'll ever meet, how many uniforms do we buy? One a day, two a day, 3 a week? We settled on 3 for the week, knowing full well we'll probably be seeing them in the wash quite frequently.. or else ban Emily from eating ANYTHING mucky.

They went through quite a bit on parental interaction this evening as well, which was good. There's coffee mornings and home visits and regular meetings that it's highly suggested we attend. There'll also be weekly newsletters and information coming home from the kids.

It really sounds like this is going to be excellent for Emily. We even met her new key worker Mrs. Watson. When we described Emily to her (she talks... sorta. Sings, but doesn't converse) she knew exactly what we were on about. This made me feel quite at ease, and that Emily's issues aren't that rare.

In a way it's going to be strange with Emily starting school in September. She's growing up and it's just the start of a long progression of milestones that signal she's moving away from being my little baby girl... This feeling is obviously tempered by the fact that she's going to get some amazing help and I'm hoping that come this time next year there'll be quite a marked improvement.

Related articles

We had our first meeting tonight at Dragonflies. A sort of pre-induction meeting to get us ready for the new school in mid-September.

It was quite informative, which is always good at these types of things. They went through various aspects of what the children will be doing, what they can offer (things we already knew like musical therapy, occupation therapy and the like) and other sundry things like transport.

The funniest thing is that Emily will have to wear a school uniform come September. It's not that much of a uniform tracky bottoms and a sweatshirt, but it gets her used to wearing one so when she graduates to big school, the clothing will be one less thing she'll have to get used to.

That brought up a question for Sue and I. As Emily is the muckiest mucky muck you'll ever meet, how many uniforms do we buy? One a day, two a day, 3 a week? We settled on 3 for the week, knowing full well we'll probably be seeing them in the wash quite frequently.. or else ban Emily from eating ANYTHING mucky.

They went through quite a bit on parental interaction this evening as well, which was good. There's coffee mornings and home visits and regular meetings that it's highly suggested we attend. There'll also be weekly newsletters and information coming home from the kids.

It really sounds like this is going to be excellent for Emily. We even met her new key worker Mrs. Watson. When we described Emily to her (she talks... sorta. Sings, but doesn't converse) she knew exactly what we were on about. This made me feel quite at ease, and that Emily's issues aren't that rare.

In a way it's going to be strange with Emily starting school in September. She's growing up and it's just the start of a long progression of milestones that signal she's moving away from being my little baby girl... This feeling is obviously tempered by the fact that she's going to get some amazing help and I'm hoping that come this time next year there'll be quite a marked improvement.